[Fish Sandwich]

Man, this show throws a sweet skeletal dark side Saber form my way and then the very same episode also assures me with the preview that both Brave Dragon and Dragonic Knight are still going to have significant screentime the week after. I should really apologize to the people who hate Saber, because I still swear Toei is for some reason literally making this show exclusively based around things I personally want to see.

And I am a sucker for the old "hero has to struggle for self-control against some kinda evil will" routine! Metal Cluster Hopper was cool. Hazard Form was cool. PuToTyra is equally as cool as TaJaDor to me. Ultimate Form? Way different in execution, but still, very cool. We've seen this trope quite a bit in Rider by this point, and while the most recent time is still arguably too recent for them to be pumping this well again, the redundancy didn't bother me at all.

I think Saber put enough of a spin on Primitive Dragon to keep it feeling fresh. The wild body language is just insane (Kousuke Asai is very good at his job); the way he holds the sword is inspired; and heck, even the design of the book itself is downright genius. What more appropriate way could Saber have chosen to communicate a form that reduces Touma to a mindless beast, devoid of free will, than a claw that forcibly holds shut a book, a source of knowledge, and a medium for self-expression?

Everything about this form has got me so hyped. Dragonic Knight was pretty much a definitive straight upgrade, but it never got me excited the way the creepy bone dragon does. Looking forward to seeing if the way it works itself into the narrative proves to be as interesting. (By the way, should I mention here that I've had a theory Touma's big picture book is the final form item for a while now? They're certainly hinting at a larger significance for it here.)

Anyway, yeah, Primitive Dragon is the big draw to this episode, but it's not ultimately a majorly significant part of the narrative. Which is fine, because we what's building up to that climax is a crazy heist movie deal with the villains and the heroes both launching simultaneous plans to break into Southern Base, which is utterly delightful as a concept, and pretty darn fun in its execution.

I lowkey like the Megid trio a fair bit, and am always waiting for the show to give them a bigger chance to shine, and this was a solid outing for all three of them, demonstrating Storius' scheming, Zooous' brutishness, and even a bit of Legeiel's pride, all in one episode. Like, these guys have always had distinct character traits, but in a lot of episodes, you kinda have to go looking for it, so the clarity this time was nice. The more the show does with these three, the better.

On the heroes' end, I think I mostly just loved how goofy Touma was throughout the infiltration? There's a vulnerability to his comic nervousness that brings him right back down to earth after so many epic speeches in a row lately. Again, this is something that's always been part of Touma's characterization, and it serves as an especially nice reminder of his humanity in an episode that builds up to the threat of that being ripped away.

This is an episode heavy enough on setup that there's potential for them to fumble some of these points later down the line, but as a start to a new arc, I thought it was quite promising.